The Vietnam War was horrific for the families of the more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen and women who died in the war. Now, American families will be weeping because based on a New York Times report, between 59,000 and 65,000 drug deaths occurred in 2016, the largest number ever recorded, and more are expected in 2017, reported the Daily Caller. Unfortunately, the staggering War on Drugs and overdoses is getting much, much worse.

Nearly every night in some American town there is a news story that leads with a series of drug overdoses that touches every single fabric of the local, state and national social level and strata. Just imagine how an Opioid addiction epidemic is far worse by claiming more lives than approximately all of the lives that were lost in the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars combined. The numbers of American deaths due to overdoses are of Biblical proportions.

One leading indicator that drug overdose deaths are having a gripping impact upon the nation is that the death rates for middle Americans has been steadily rising for almost every racial group. After a century or more of decline the life expectancy in America dropped largely because of opioids since 1993 in 2015.

The death rate climbed 12 percent for White Americans in their prime years of life, between 2010 and 2915. Meanwhile American Indians saw an 18 percent increase and Hispanics a 7 percent increase. Black Americans saw the lowest measurable amount of deaths with a four percent increase.

As more and more homes are seeing drug overdoses greet them at their door steps, medical leaders like Dr. Leana Wen, the commissioner of public health in Baltimore, told the New York Times, “There’s no question that there’s an epidemic and that this is a national public health emergency.” She also stressed, “The number of people overdosing is skyrocketing, and we have no indication that we’ve reached the peak.”

This out of control drug dependency is certainly not accidental. With over two million Americans faced with some sort of physical dependence on opioids, doctors wrote more than 236 million prescriptions for opioids in 2016, showing American appetite for painkillers is not slowing down, reported Axios.

The states hardest hit by the opioid crisis are, The initial data points to large increases in drug overdose deaths “in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine.” Incidentally, the state of Ohio’s Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit against five drug companies for directly contributing to the drug epidemic in Ohio. He estimates that drug overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016, reported the New York Times.

These escalating deaths point to one very tragic fact. With nearly 100 million American who have a prescription for opioids, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under 50.